It's A Harvest Of Heartache On The Farm

I have a friend who lives in south Georgia. He is a farmer. I ran into him recently.

''Things been tough?'' I asked him. What a stupid question. Farmers are going broke all over.

Everytime I think about farming for a living, I think of a line from a Tom T. Hall song. In reference to guitar-picking for a living, Tom T. sings, ''Ain't no money in it, and it'll lead you to an early grave.''

''Things are worse than you think,'' said my friend. ''The drought has put a lot of good, strong men down. And you know what nobody ever talks about? About how many of these men are losing their wives, as well as their farms.'' ''Farm wives are bailing out on their husbands?''

''Sure are. Mine would probably leave me but she doesn't have anywhere to go.''

There was the farmer in Oklahoma. The farm was falling apart and the man became deeply depressed.

As the story stated, ''In an attempt to help him pull himself together, the wife had told him she and the kids were leaving if he didn't do something.''

The farmer did something. He killed his wife and his two children and then set his house on fire. As the blaze spread, he shot and killed himself.

I talked to some people about what is being done to help farm families. The Georgia Department of Agriculture, I was told, has a hot line.

''I talked to a man in his 80s,'' said Terry McCrainie of the department. ''He said it's worse now than in the Depression. Then, he said, you had a garden and a cow and you could make it without money. Today, there's the telephone and electricity that keep costing. Some people ask, 'Why don't they take out the phone and the electricity?' Well, why should they when the government gives people on welfare in the city apartments with electricity.'' I asked why farmers don't find other jobs.

''We try to place them,'' said McCrainie. ''Farmers can do a lot of other things. They have had to be self-sufficient, so they usually know a lot about plumbing and some are good electricians. But so many of them have been farming for so long they're stubborn. They have their pride. They hate to quit.''

And what about the wives?

''That's where a lot of the problems with that pride begins. Wives call me and say 'All he wants to do is farm and I've had it up to here.' It's all the stress and especially with the young wives.''

Pardon, if this comes out a bit too dramatic, but as I wrote this piece something kept coming back to me time after time: another song.

There was that bar in Toledo, across from the depot. Kenny Rogers sat talking to a pretty woman.

A man walked in the front door. His calloused hands were shaking, his big heart was breaking, and he turned to the woman and said:

''You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille. Four hungry children and a crop in the field.''